Labor Dept. Won't Research Sexual Harassment

As part of their efforts to combat sexual harassment in the workplace, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and 20 other Democratic senators asked the U.S. Department of Labor to research the prevalence and cost of this issue. Well, the agency is refusing to do so because collecting that data is apparently too much work.

"The Department is committed to preventing and eliminating workplace sexual harassment and understand your concerns about sexual harassment in the workplace," Acting Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner William Wiatrowski told Gillibrand in a letter first published by CNN. "However, collecting this information would be complex and costly."

"Another federal agency dedicated to the federal workforce, the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), was in fact able to conduct this type of data collection and analysis starting in the 1980s. In an update to this study in 1994, the MSPB conservatively estimated that over the course of two years, sexual harassment in the federal workforce cost the government a total of $327.1 million as a result of job turnover, sick leave, and decreased productivity," the letter reads. "Federal agencies were able to continue conducting surveys after this time. Surely the government’s capacity to collect data has only become more sophisticated over the past several decades."